At least in higher organisms, the enzyme poly ADP-ribosyltransferase is known to catalyse a transfer of the ADP-ribose moiety from the oxidized form, NAD.sup.+, of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide to nuclear acceptor proteins so as to form homo ADP-ribose polymers, and this process has been implicated in a number of cellular events such as, for example, repair of DNA damage, development of cellular differentiation, transformation of cells by oncogenes, and gene expression A common feature in a number of these processes is the formation and repair of DNA strand breaks and the stage which involves the PARP enzyme appears to be that of DNA ligase II-mediated strand rejoining. In the majority of cases a role for poly ADP-ribosylation has been implicated by the use of inhibitors of the PARP enzyme, and this has led to suggestions that such inhibitors, by interfering with the intracellular DNA repair mechanism, may have a useful chemotherapeutic role insofar as they should be able to modify treatment resistance characteristics and potentiate or enhance the effectiveness of cytotoxic drugs in chemotherapy or of radiation in radiotherapy where a primary effect of the treatment is that of causing DNA damage in target cells, as for example in many forms of antitumour therapy.
In this connection, several classes of PARP inhibitors are already known, including benzamide and various nicotinamide and benzamide analogues, especially 3-substituted benzamides with small substituent groups such as 3-amino, 3-hydroxy and 3-methoxy. PARP inhibitory activity of certain N-substituted benzamides has also been reported in EP-A-0305008 wherein it has also been proposed to use these compounds in medicine for increasing the cytotoxicity of radiation or of chemotherapeutic drugs.
Regarding this use of benzamide compounds as chemotherapeutic agents, various studies on such compounds that are known to exhibit PARP inhibitory activity have confirmed that they can potentiate the cytoxicity of a range of antitumour agents in vitro, for example, bleomycin and methylating drugs. More limited data has further indicated that such benzamide compounds can also potentiate the activity of cytotoxic drugs in vivo, although the dose requirements have appeared to be rather high (e.g. in the region of 0.5 g kg.sup.-1 per dose for 3-aminobenzamide) and there may be associated problems in preparing satisfactory pharmaceutical formulations and in avoiding toxicity limitations. Furthermore, a number of the known benzamide compounds have also been shown clearly to have potential as radiosensitizers, increasing for example ionising radiation-induced tumour cell kill both in vitro and in vivo, and it is believed that in many cases this effect is related to these compounds acting as PARP inhibitors and interfering with DNA repair.
However, notwithstanding the existing data from in vitro and in vivo studies suggesting that PARP inhibitors have considerable potential as useful chemotherapeutic agents which merit further clinical evaluation, for instance in connection with cancer therapy, currently available known PARP inhibitors are not considered as yet to be entirely suitable to represent candidate drugs and there remains a need to find and develop a greater range of compounds having potentially useful PARP inhibitory properties.